i'm michael dyson. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. great to see you. the house of representatives is leaving now. bye-bye, congress. they are taking a big long recess and they are going home. they're going home without having done a whole bunch of stuff that congress basically always does. they have not, for example, done a farm bill. they did not make any decisions on overall government spending levels, even though they said they would. and that whole sequester thing you hear about is looming if they don't. they just didn't make any decision on it. they have not done their post office bill. even though congress so screwed up the post office that as of yesterday the post office is defaulting on payments that congress says it is supposed to make. congress did not reauthorize the violence against women act, with

which used to be the very definition of a noncontroversial bipartisan thing in congress. they did not do a russia trade bill they said they were going to do. they did not make their bush tax cuts decisions, which they said they were going to do. they just didn't do any of it. and they could have, i guess, stayed until they got it done. but instead they've decided to just leave. they're leaving. bye. they're gone for the rest of august and into september. jobs, jobs, jobs. when congress is in washington but they're not actually working on anything, what they do with their time there instead is something called messaging. they do things that don't necessarily have any real policy impact, but they're supposed to have some sort of political impact. they're supposed to excite the base. they're supposed to at least make the folks back home in the home district happy. which is why, for example, there have been zero bills brought to the floor to fix this giant problem with the financial structure of the postal service, which is a real problem created by congress that congress has to fix.

there have been zero bills brought to the floor to fix that, but there have been 60 bills -- 6-0 -- 60 bills to give new names to post office buildings. see, when you're not working on real policy, congress does messaging instead. messaging and politics and making donors and home districts happy. and the republicans in the house have chosen for their messaging and politic stunts this week. well, yesterday it was a big anti-contraception rally at which one member of congress, republican congressman you see speaking here, mike kelly, he called expanded access to birth control the ee kwiv lentd of the pearl harbor attack and the 9/11 attack. the last round of congressional republican ranting against access to birth control this past spring, you may recall, was devastating to republican poll numbe numbers among women voters, including for their standard

bearer mr. romney. but republicans in the house have decided anyway they are going for it again. so that was yesterday. yesterday was expanded access to birth control is pearl harbor and 9/11 messaging and politics day. today's big messaging and politics move by republicans in congress who aren't working on real policy was english only. a hearing today on a bill to establish an official language of the united states. english only. thus barring government employees from ever interacting with or helping nenive citizen with their language unless their native language is english. practically speaking, there is 0% chance this will become law. but the republicans decided to hold this public hearing on it anyway, as matter urgency before leaving town. sure the post office is imploding and it's their fault and we haven't done a farm bill, but we got to get to this important messaging here. we've got to get to this important english only thing.

and presumably that means they like the politics in this. they like the messaging in this. the latest latino decisions poll shows president obama beating governor mitt romney by 48 points among latino voters. 48 points. that's the margin. the de facto leader of the republican party is not just less popular with latino voters, he's in are you kidding me territory. the republicans have been trying hard to fix this problem. for example, they announced a latino outreach team called juntos con romney. the romney campaign itself put out a video of one of mr. romney's sons -- i think it's craig -- speaking spanish. [ speaking spanish ] >> it is craig. hola, craig romney. you know, maybe that will work. maybe that's what most latino voters care about. maybe the republicans in congress will make sure to hold big profile hearsing on english

only. one of the first rules of political competition is that when your opponent is setting themselves proverbially on fire, you should avoid providing them any proverbial water. when somebody's messing up, just get out of the way. the democrats today could have got out of the way. i guess put out press releases about the fact the republicans were shooting themselves in the foot like this. hey, look how the republicans are capitalizing on the p.r. they got for electing ted cruz as their republican senate nominee from texas. look how they're capitalizing on that. an english-only hearing in the house of representatives. attention, latino voters. democrats could have let it all happen and the damage is done, right? but the democrats today decided they could not let well enough alone. they could not hold themselves back. the democrats in the house today decided to make this more than just a political victory for their side that they could watch and smile at. they decided that they were going to make it fun. >> and i now yield to

distinguished ranking member of the full committee, mr. connors, for his statement. [ speaking spanish ] >> congressman john conyers, native of georgia, obviously not a native spanish speaker and equally obviously having great deal of fun at the republicans' "speak english only" hearing today, which again will result in no new policy. it is simply a message from the republican party to the nation's latino voters about what they think of you. oh and also jobs, jobs, jobs. joining us now is columnist from

the washington post and msnbc contributor and my friend eugene robinson. it's great to see you tonight. [ speaking spanish ] >> knowing you speak fluent spanish made this more fun today. maybe some of this is lost in translation. is there a secret genius at work here? i mean they did not have to do this, and they did this. why did they do this? >> no, no, no. this is not super secret double reverse psychology at work here. this is just dumb. i mean look at those numbers in the polls. 70 to 22. that is worse than the drubbing that john mccain took from barack obama among latino voters. which in and of itself was historic. it was two to one. this is worse. and what republicans are on the verge of doing is not only blowing the vote of the nation's biggest and fastest growing minority for this election, but perhaps for a generation. this is serious long-term

implications for the republican party. >> we have seen mr. romney pursue the latino vote in a way that seems hapless and counterproductive. his policies are in terms of how far to the right they are even of the republican field. he's the one who went after rick perry of texas as being too compassionate on the issue of immigration. and so we've seen mitt romney sort of screw this up, but it seems more interesting and more muzzling to me that john boehner would let this happen in the house of representatives. the house of representatives is essentially a dictatorship under the speaker. the speaker gets to decide what happens. why would the republican congressional leadership let this happen on day that they could have let anything happen? >> well, this is not the first time that john boehner has had to go along with things in the house that he personally might not have thought was such great idea, but look. he has a majority, but there's

this huge very right wing block that is going to create problems for him. and, frankly, he's got eric cantor looking over his shoulder, ready to assume the gavel if boehner falters, so he does some things to keep his leadership, keep his position. and he's a smart politician, so i'm sure he realizes this was not a great move. >> okay. on the last point there, being smart and realizing this was dumb but letting it happen anyway. i mean i have an operating hypothesis for this entire congress, and i don't mean it personally and i don't mean it in a mean way, but think john boehner is really bad at his job. i think he can't control a group over whom he essentially has total control. would he assert it. is he actually so worried about a revolt from eric cantor or from somebody else that he has to be forced into making these decisions that he's taking? i think he's just bad at this. >> well, you can look at it either way.

i mean i frankly think he has to be worried about a revolt. i think he has to be worried about appearing to be on the wrong side of the fence on what are seen as bedrock conservative, conservative issues. that's what the base seems to respond to. that's what the base seems to want. and all the republicans that i talk to in washington are always looking over their shoulders at that republican base. the red need the base and not wanting to do anything that offends them. so i do think that's a real factor in boehner's decisions about whether or not he -- a more adroit politician would find a way to knock yourself in the head a few weeks before the election. that's possible too. but i do think the fear of the base is important to boehner. >> gene, we have been talking a lot recently on the show about the democrats' assertion and

recently the republicans' assertion that texas ultimately becomes a purple state, a swing state, because of the growing latino demographic there and the latino vote. i think that may happen in texas in the long run. in the shorter run, though, for this election with the latino vote situation desperately awful for mitt romney and getting worse, thanks to the behavior of the congressional republicans, are there states you're watching for this election where latino voters may make a difference? >> virginia. the latino population in virginia has been increasing rapidly. it's significantly bigger now than it was four years ago. virginia's the ultimate purple state. it could be the state where on election day you find both mitt romney and barack obama looking for that last vote. and so the latino vote could potentially be not just influential but decisive in a state like virginia. certainly in a state like nevada, another swing state

where there's a huge latino vote that's going to make a big difference. and right now you'd have to say it's going to go to president obama. u. >> eugene robinson, thanks for joining us tonight, i so much appreciate it. >> mucho gusto. >> i won't say it back. i'll embarrass myself. i should mention, a quick correction. congressman john conyers i said was from the state of georgia. i don't know why i said that. i wrote it myself and corrected it back in the edit after somebody fact checked me, which is idiotic. so he's from michigan, not the great state of georgia. my error. i'm sorry. all right. what do the bp oil spill and mitt romney's time at bain capital have in common? something brand new. that story's coming up.

okay. what's a good second career if your first career had involved tragically miss managing the occupation of a foreign country? thanks to the second career of paul bremer, this is not a theoretical question. you might remember paul bremer as america's point man in iraq at the start of the u.s. occupation in iraq in 2003 and 2004. he was the administrator of the coalition provisional authority. the transitional government that we set up in iraq after we invaded. among other things, paul bremer oversaw the disastrous dissolving of the iraqi army and the prisoner abuse scandal at abu ghraib. but now bremer has moved on to something new. water color. yes, painting. mostly landscapes. the folks at foreign policy took

time out for a "where are they now" piece in which they highlight some of his latest works. there's one that's even a nude. this one is called nude with maltese colors he painted in 2009. paul bremer making abstract nude water color paintings is actually kind of great, if you think about it. in the sense that way too many people with horrific foreign policy experience fail upwards, right? they keep getting foreign policy jobs. but not paul bremer. had did not fail upward. he is not doing american foreign policy anymore. he is quietly painting vermont landscapes and the occasional tasteful nude. yay! but that's more yay than we can say for the other guy most closely associated with the coalition provisional authority experience in iraq. the spokesman for the u.s. in iraq after the invasion, dan senore. the guy who was always telling reporters, hey, everything is fine over here. everything is going great. that guy is not painting landscapes in vermont. he is now serving as mitt romney's top foreign policy adviser.

and, of course, the romney campaign is not dumb. they knew that would be a liability to have their most visible foreign policy guy be one of the most visible foreign policy guys from the iraq war. but you make a calculation, right? you make a calculation in politics against the spokesman for the iraq thing. on the other side of the ledger about hiring dan senore, maybe they like his ideas. it was one of his ideas that palestinians have an inferior culture to israelis. which is why they're more poor. it is that idea romney expounded on a trip this week to lots and lots of fanfare. so apparently lending ideas like that to mr. romney, the campaign saw as enough of an asset to outweigh his iraq war back garage when the campaign decided to take him on.

i would maybe not have made that call, but that apparently is the kind of calculation the romney campaign made. you have to make a calculation. what do you gain and what do you lose? similarly there's what they made against the latest attack against the obama white house. the romney campaign is accusing president obama's campaign manager now of improperly using a personal e-mail address for white house business. now, this is brand-new attack that they have not made before. on the plus side of this attack is that this is definitely not about mitt romney's tax returns. it's not about anybody's tax returns. so that is a plus for the romney campaign in decide whether or not to use this, and also this is going on offense. that's always good. they're trying to turn the page. and it's about mr. obama's campaign manager, who's an anonymous guy who doesn't get attacked in politics. so maybe they think that will rattle him and thereby rattle and hurt the campaign. those must all be things the romney campaign is thinking they stand to gain from launching this attack. those are all pluses. on the minus side, bringing up the idea of hiding your e-mails if you're the romney campaign

does run the risk of reminding people he's the guy whose top aides bought their government hard drives at the end of his term as governor of massachusetts, leaving the romney's e-mails wiped from a government server. they took the hard drives with them when they left the governorship. that's a story that really hasn't been in the news all that much. it is a known thing about mr. romney. he admits that they did it to avoid letting politically damaging information out into the public sphere. it's a liability for them, and nobody has made much hay about it until now. but now his campaign has people talking and thinking about proper e-mail use because of this attack they launched on the obama campaign this morning. but, again, it's a calculation. that's the risk. the calculation that the campaign has to make. you bring up the issue of hiding away government e-mails, maybe that's a good attack for you. but it does risk people remembering your record in office, which is a real liability.

choices, weighing the pros and the cons. these calculations. campaigns make these every day. about attacks, about political movements of the candidate, about personnel. here's a new one. the romney campaign we learned today has hired a lobbyist, a new person who has not yet been involved in the campaign, to help them craft a political response on the attacks to what is supposed to be mitt romney's greatest asset, his time in the private sector. they thought that was going to be the basis on which mr. romney was running for the presidency. they wanted to run on his being in business. but if you look at the poll numbers right now on how people view mr. romney in terms of his business experience, it is not looking like mr. romney's greatest strength. new swing state polling out this week, the polls quote, found that more voters say mr. romney's experience was too focused on making profits at bain capital rather than the kind of experience that would help create jobs. so now the campaign has hired a new lobbyist to help them out on

this subject, which they thought was going to be great for them and is turning into a liability rather than an asset. but again, even hiring this lobbyist, every campaign move is a calculation. when they were drafting what must have been their pros and cons list about whether or not to make this higher, because they knew obviously it was going to get a lot of attention, there was surely a lot of things in the "don't do this" column, a lot of things in the kon column. the woman they have hired her name is michele davis. she is something from the george w. bush administration. and that is always problematic. you do not want to remind america of the george w. bush administration or brag on how many people you are bringing over from that administration to what you're promising for the future. she was also in the exact wrong part of the bush administration during the exact wrong time period in terms of the politics. michele davis was the right hand woman to the treasury secretary while the economy was falling off a cliff at the end of the bush administration and when they came up with t.a.r.p., the big bailout. in the bush administration she

was part architect and part spin doctor for selling the bailout. selling t.a.r.p. so much so that in the movie about the bailout, the too big to fail movie, a famous actor portrays her. cynthia nixon plays her. neat. that's her, bailout lady. that's a liability. that's a problem. from the transition from the bush administration to the obama administration, michele davis is on record as saying she was very pleased with the new choice for treasury secretary to succeed hank paulson. she was pleased barack obama picked timothy geithner. mitt romney of course attacks tim geithner all the time. this new person he hired was into him in a totally "on the record" kind of way. and there is this problem. >> well, i think you know that fannie mae and freddie mac were a big part of the housing crisis we have in the nation, and we've had this discussion before. speaker gingrich was hired by freddie mac to promote them to influence other people throughout washington,

encouraging them not to dismantle these two entities. inthink -- i think that was an enormous mistake. instead we should have had a whistle blower, not a horn tooter. >> a horn tooter. step off. during the republican primary, when newt gingrich was just destroying mitt romney on the issue of bain capital on his business sector career, mitt romney joiner to that was newt gingrich was a lobbyist for freddie mac. mitt romney would like to blame freddie mac and fannie mae for the financial collapse. well, this person he has just hired to help him out with messaging on his business career was a lobbyist for fannie mae. so the campaign has to make a calculation about whether or not to hire this person. and all of these things on the "don't hire her" side, all of these things on the "not pro but kon side," these are, frankly,

just such flaming political bags of poop on the doorstep. there must be something really great on the other side of the ledger. there must be something great about this hire that outweighs all those things that are downsides. well, the other salient thing in her background that she's more well known than having cynthia nixon portray her about being a lobbyist for the thing about destroying the economy, the thing she's more famous for is this. she was the top p.r. person in charge of trying to make bp look good in the wake of the bp oil spill. that's who mitt romney just hired to make his bain record look better. remember when the guy who was the head of bp did that really ornate apology? it was almost like a japanese corporate-style apology that that was going to absolve him. but everybody still hated him and they had to fire him anyway. that pr move apparently was hers. michele davis was at brunswick group when bp hired them to salvage their image in the wake of them causing the worst environmental disaster in the

history of the united states. now, the trade press in the p.r. industry at the time was pretty scathing about how big this job was but how not great it was being done. if ever there was a p.r. agency -- look at this -- tasked with putting lipstick on the metaphorical pig. given that bp's crisis communications is disastrous. it leading newscasts and brunswick has been painted as the villain. it's not different to michele davis, that's who mitt romney just hired. a lead on the bp crisis. before joining the agency she worked at the department of the treasury and before that worked in the white house on foreign policy during the latter stages of the iraq war. when she sat down to do an

interview with advertising aides from bp headquarters during the sixth week of the oil spill, when asked how many people do you have on the ground? meaning bp? her answer was i'm not going to get into that. when asked, how hard is it to get a client in a situation like this to take your advice, her answer was, no comment. advertising age actually did a poll of the people in the ad industry at the time of the bp oil spill asking, hey, would you take this job? if bp wanted you to shine up their image while the gulf of mexico was hemorrhaging their oil, would you take the job? only 43% of people in the not exactly saint-like ad industry said for ethical reasons, they would not take that job. but michele davis, she took it.

and that's who mitt romney hired to clean up bain. and that's who mitt romney has hired. some of them have ethical constraints on what jobs they would take. but some don't. this firm was also hired by the gap in 2007 to clean things up for them after it was discovered that gap clothing was using being produced, using 10-year-old slaves in india. >> for gap, a retailer that has long promoted itself as promotionally responsible, the pictures could not be more embarrassing. children as young as 10 showing clothing carrying the gap label in a sweat shop in india. the photos got immediate response from gap's president. >> i am grateful that this investigative reporter found this because we can do something about it. >> good answer. when the gap needed some good answers when they wanted to clean up, not necessarily that problem, but the image problem created by their child slave labor problem, they hired this p.r. company called brunswick group. brunswick also got the cal when bp befouled the gulf coast with the spill.

brunswick was who bp called not to clean up the problem of the oil but the image problem created by the oil. now mitt romney has hired the lead person from brunswick who was in charge of cleaning up the bp image disaster so she can apply the same cleanup skills to his career at bain capital. why is this okay? i mean it's not even just romney. why is this okay for mitt romney to do this? i mean maybe the most important part for mitt romney here is he sees his career at bain capital not as an seattle but akin to the bp oil spill. in terms of how it needs to be managed for the pr effect. that's romney. but more broadly, why is it okay to team up with, to bring out the corporate clean up my image disaster mercenary memory hole diggers and bring them into our politics? why is it okay for politicians to pull that most morally repella repellant, indefensible thing out of culture and put it into the arena of public service? i mean when did the crisis

management industry -- which is what they call themselves, right? when did these people -- when did they prove themselves? a way in terms of their worth and contributions to us as a society that they get to do crossover duty at the highest levels of our democracy? it's not just about mr. romney, and it's not a partisan thing. i mean there are democratic flacks, democratic politicos who work at the same firm from which he hired them to clean up the bane report. when hillary clinton was running for president in 2008, her top strategist was a guy who split his responsibilities between her campaign, between the top role he played in her campaign and run aing a p.r. firm called burson-marsteller, which perhaps more than any firm epitomizes this open sewer that runs through american corporate culture. it's not just mitt romney. it's not just republicans. but it is as disgusting now as i have been saying for years now

that it ever has been. >> who's burson-marsteller? well, let me put it this way. when blackwater killed those 17 iraqi civilians in baghdad, they called burson-marsteller. baghdad, they called them. when there was a nuclear meltdown at three mile island, they called burson-marsteller. romanian dictator, burson- marsteller. the military that overthrew the government of argentina in 1976, the general dialed burson-marsteller. the government of nigeria accused of genocide, burson- marsteller. phillip morris, burson marsteller. silicone breast implants, burson- marsteller. do you remember aqua dots?

beads with something converted to date rape drug when they put the beads in their mouths and ended up in comas? even the aqua dots people called burson-marsteller. when evil needs public relations, evil has them on speed dial. that's why it was so creepy when hillary clinton had mark pen, ceo of bur son marsteller. and now following this great bipartisan disgusting tradition, mitt romney does not hire burson-marsteller, he hires these who cleaned up bp to look better after this. in order to try to make him look better after bain. it's disgusting.

the most dramatic video of an election day, not necessarily of an election fight but an actual election day, people voting, was probably the record of what happened in ohio in 2004. you may remember this, right? nine-hour lines to vote. and voting machine irregularities. and uncertain counts. and did i mention nine-hour lines? it was the kind of election that jimmy carter supervises, except it was here. well, buckle up. ohio has never been seen as more critical to a presidential election thant is to this upcoming one in 2012. guess what's going on in ohio now? that's next.

when george w. bush ran for president the first time in 2001, he won the swing state of ohio very narrowly. george bush beat al gore in ohio by 165,000 votes. and ohio is big, and that is a slim margin. ralph nader had more than 100,000 votes in ohio that year. that was a razor thin margin. then the next election, 2004,

president bush won re-election, and he gone won in ohio. this time by an even slimmer margin. by only 118,000 votes. it had been uncomfortably close in ohio for republicans in the year 2000. it was even more uncomfortable for them in 2004. part of what makes ohio such a swing state, such a bellwether, is in terms of the way people vote, it's sort of a microcosm of what you find in the rest of the country. people in the less populated parts of ohio tend to vote republican. people who live in the more populated, more concentrated density parts of ohio tend to vote democratic. and for people who lived in the more populated parts of ohio in 2004, it was profoundly difficult to vote. voters across urban ohio in 2004 found their polling places did not have enough machines and they ended up waiting in very long lines to vote. so long that a lot of people who had kids at home or who had to go to work as well as vote on election day just gave up. people who could wait waited in

line in the rain in the early morning, all through the day, at night, in the dark. they waited for hours. for two hours, for three hours, even four hours. a lot of people in ohio that year waited even longer than that. >> i waited, i voted. >> at kenyon college this was not your yoordinary all-nighter. >> i'm willing to wait as long as it takes for me to vote. >> hours after the polls were scheduled to close -- >> i've been here since 4:30. >> -- hundreds of students, professors and neighbors were still stuck here in line. some stuck here for more than ten hours. >> i'm not going to leave. i'm going to make sure that every vote counts. >> why the wait? for 1300 voters here, only two ballot booths. >> people were voting 40 per hour. so you do the math. >> to the extent an election is about making it possible for people to vote, the '04 election in ohio was an abysmal failure. it was a landmark failure. it was the kind of extraordinary "heard around the world" failure

that led to front page hearings in congress and led to this report, in fact, from congress, which you can now buy on the internet in book form. it's called "preserving democracy: what went wrong in ohio." the report cited numerous serious election irregularities, like precincts that didn't have enough voting machines, partisan challengers waiting to challenge voters' rights to cast a ballot once they made it through those miserable lines. this congressional report called for election reform in ohio. do you remember this from 2005? do you remember us wanting to make elections better? do you remember wanting to make voting easier? remember congress telling ohio it had to make voting easier? remember that? well, a few short years later in 2010 ohio went bright red in the republican's great red tide election in the midterms. ohio republicans took over the state house to go with the senate. they elected a new republican governor john kasich. and ohio republicans' approach to election reform was to make the lines longer, to get rid of the last three days of early voting.

now instead of being able to walk to the clerk's office and vote early up to the election, now unless you are uniformed military or voting overseas, now you have to get in line with everybody else. early voting stops three days earlier than it used to, and once you're in line, just pray they have enough machines. pray you don't spend your entire day waiting to exercise your right as a citizen. told by congress that ohio needs to make voting easier. under republican government, the state moved overtly to make voting harder.s, the state moved overtly to make voting harder., the state moved overtly to make voting hardes, the state moved overtly to make voting harder. ohio republicans closed the window down on early voting which actually had been expanded after the '04 debacle. they expanded early voting in ohio in time for the 2008 election, which went a lot smoother, and, of course, a democrat named barack obama won the state in ohio. the loss of those three days of early voting for the next election is only one of the ways state republicans in ohio have tried to make it harder to vote this year. they added a requirement to show i.d. you never needed to show before to vote in ohio and many residents don't have. they tried not only to shorten by three days, they tried to cut early voting in half initially. they tried to repeal the

requirement that poll workers give you correct information about where to vote, so you vote at the right precinct table and your ballot doesn't get thrown out. they tried to repeal that requirement. ohio's election system was already broken, and once republicans gained control, they set about make it worse. the cincinnati inquirer, which is not exactly a left wing rag, just published a big multi-part investigation into the problem of voting in ohio. their investigation is headlined "will ohio count your vote?" the enquirer found that voting, america's most precious right and the foundation for all others, is a fragile exercise for many ohioans. the problems in ohio's election process quote, call into question both whether every ohioan's vote will be counted november 6th and whether the state, always pivotal in races can assure a timely, accurate, and lawsuit-free count. ohio, i love you, but your elections are a mess.

your election officials cannot come close to guaranteeing that everybody who wants to vote and tries to vote, in fact, casts a ballot. and your government is making it harder. the early voting republicans tried to cut in half, nearly a third of all ohio voters used early voting in 2008 when the democrats won the white house. during the specific three days of early voting that republicans now have managed to get rid of for this election, last time 100,000 ohio votes came in over those three days. as of last month, the obama re-election campaign is suing the state of ohio over these new rules that cut off the last three days of early voting. who knows. maybe they will win. but if they don't, then voting in ohio this year which is always hard is set to get that much harder. more ahead. stay with us. sometimes, i feel like it's me against my hair.

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after a court order affecting two ohio counties, election officials tried to speed up the line by offering paper ballots. many here refused. after hours in line, they feared their vote wouldn't count. >> that was what happened in ohio when people tried to vote in the 2004 presidential election. huge lines, up to ten-hour lines and not enough machines and

waiting all day and the offer of paper ballots. don't use paper! that's what it was like if you lived in some well-populated areas of ohio in 2004. if you went to the polls on election day in ohio of 2004. expanding early voting in ohio after that disastrous election, after 2004, actually made for a much smoother election in 2008, which incidentally was won by a democrat. for this next election, a response from ohio's republican governor and legislature has been to try to make the lines longer. they have cut three days off the early voting for 2012. it's the time frame when a hundred thousand people cast ballots in the last election. joining us now is michael waldman who tracks voting state by state, also a speech writer for president clinton in the late 1990s. thank you for being here. >> great to be here. >> the obama re-election campaign is suing ohio officials for cutting back early voting in that state. do you think that's likely to seed? >> all these lawsuits that's hand to hand combat. between now and november, there's a decent chance, but these cases are tough. the laws are not clear. there's not an obvious way to

bring a case like that. but what they're basically saying is, first of all, the republicans tried to cut back dramatically in early voting. the voters went and signed enough petition signatures that that was going to be on the ballot, and the legislature repealed its own handiwork. >> so it wouldn't accidentally turn out voters against them presumably? >> people might notice their rights were being taken away. but they did leave this period right before the election. that's the time when african-american and minority voters are especially likely to vote early. so what the obama campaign is saying in the suit they filed two weeks ago is, look. it's an inconsistency between cutting that off and the military voters. i'm sure it's not a position they're comfortable making, because of course, military voters should be able to vote as easily as possible, but it's just a microcause. . ohio didn't get all the attention, but in a lot of ways it's florida without the palm

trees when it comes to voting. >> uh-huh. one of the reasons i wanted to have you back tonight to talk about this is because i feel like i understand a lot and we've been covering a lot what these different governors are doing to make voting harder the the states. i understand a lot less about what is being done to stop them or to try to preserve voting rights. as far as i understand it, that ohio lawsuit by the obama campaign is the first campaign lawsuit, at least of the election so far. but we are seeing some other legal battles. there's been these hearings in pennsylvania this week. >> that's right. the big wave of laws that cut back on voting in 2011 has really hit a wall of legal and judicial resistance in 2012. there have been lawsuits mostly by voting rights groups, the ben nan center and other groups saying that this violates these various laws or violate the voting rights act or violate the first amendment or other federal law. the really high stakes one right

now is in pennsylvania. pennsylvania just passed a very, very strict voter i.d. law. and it's really as you know it's a law saying you've got to have an in effect driver's license. which one out of ten pennsylvanians don't have. so there's a suit brought by the aclu, an advancement project to voting rights groups. it's gone very well for the plaintiffs. the first day of the trial, the state of pennsylvania signed a stipulation where they fessed up and said, we have no evidence of any voter fraud in the state of pennsylvania. that's a bad first day of the case. you know, for them. then they had their officials on the stand and forgot what the law actually said. and then, of course, there actually were real live, very sympathetic pennsylvanians who would be blocked from voting. so, you know, i think there's a good chance it's under the state constitution, not under the federal constitution, and that state constitution has blocked bad voting laws in wisconsin and missouri. we think there'll be a ruling in the next couple of weeks, perhaps, and we're very hopeful.

>> michael waldman, i'd like to have you back soon to talk about one other specific issue, which is the issue of poll watchers and people being physically at the polls to intimidate people out of voting. would you come back to talk to me about that? >> of course. it's the next wave around the corner for voters. >> thank you. i appreciate it. >> my pleasure. >> all right, we'll be right back. eligible for medicare?

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it's a sport that requires agility and flexibility and endurance. it is the sport of avoiding one very specific olympic sport. mitt romney, take it away. >> when is the event, and for those of us who don't follow the sport, what happens? is there rounds of competition? is there just one round? >> i have to tell you. this is ann's sport. i'm not sure which day the sport goes on. >> my sons gave me a box. i opened it, it was a rubber horse mask. >> did you wear it? >> no. >> it sounds like your horse is going to the olympics. people are already getting snarky about this, governor. they're saying this is elitist. this is not a sport americans are familiar with.

but it is yore ridge nating in sort of cavalry country. our history does have that. any comments as to wait means to have your horse there and ann and your own familiarity with the sport? >> it's actually ann's passion, not so much mine. when i get a chance to ride a horse, it's western, and it's on a trail. >> you're not going to actually see this horse compete, matt lauer said. i mean this is a big deal having a horse in the olympics. no interest to be there? mitt romney's response, it's ann's horse. she's the horse person. the whole objective is to distance himself from the hob that his family is committed to. even with a fox news reporter trying to help suggesting there was a long and honorable

tradition in cavalry. the answer is still, i'm not going to watch. i don't know when it's happening. i don't like it. it's my wife who likes it. it's not me. his awkwardness in trying to be linked to the horse dressage, in which he has been invested to the point of eight horses, including this one in the olympics, that awkwardness honestly is essentially a matter of style, of interest. more substantive point is this is mitt romney's personal business. not personal business as it's his personal life, but literally a business that he and his wife own as a business interest. we know this from the one and only complete year of tax returns mitt romney has released. you see that there? the highlighted line is for his failed attempt at a $77,000 write-off in 2010 for the care and feeding of the horse that competed in the olympics today in which mitt romney said he doesn't want to watch and he doesn't care about. he described the horse's upkeep as a business loss. the matter of what is in mr. romney's tax returns and what he says is in his tax returns turned into a white hot political fight today.